Taylor Swift continues to give back in incredible ways.
The singer recently helped out a woman who was hit by a car while she was saving some teenagers. On a GoFundMe set up to help Ashley Taunton and her family amid Taunton’s recovery, Swift donated $50,000, PEOPLE reports.
Taunton is a Taunton and mom of three who lives in Connecticut. She was driving in Rhode Island in July with her youngest daughter when she saw the accident, adding that “when I see there’s somebody in trouble, I tend to want to go help,” She then got out of her car and told her daughter to stay, going to the stranded car where she saw the driver and two passengers. While they were “a little bit banged up,” she said they seemed “relatively okay.”
However, while she was talking to them, another vehicle hydroplaned and was coming right towards them. The crash report obtained by PEOPLE said the “other driver lost control of that vehicle, which was traveling in the second lane of I-95 heading southbound, because road conditions were wet and slippery.”
With the car coming at them, she ended up pushing one of the teens out of harm’s way and was then struck by the vehicle.
“It just felt like a big explosion,” Taunton told the outlet. “I just remember being on the ground and I could see my ankle was just hanging there. I went to try to get up and I couldn’t breathe.”
“I knew I had internal bleeding,” she added. “I thought, ‘That was it.’ Then in the ambulance as well, I was just praying — I didn’t want to die.”
An ambulance came, and Taunton was admitted to Rhode Island Hospital with multiple life-threatening injuries. Along with the GoFundMe, which has raised more than $72,000 as of the time of publication, a Meal Train was also created and has raised over $16,000.
It Was A Perfect Tribute To Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton tragically passed away on Tuesday, Aug. 25, at the age of 80 after a short battle with cancer, and the singer’s legacy is being celebrated. One of the things she’s best known for is her charitable work and generous nature.
Swift honored the singer after news of her passing, sharing a statement with Variety, saying that she was “truly the gift that kept on giving.” In her statement, Swift also highlighted Partn ‘s work with her Imagination Library, which she created after being inspired by her father and his inability to read.
“Before he passed away, my Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done,” she said in a note on her website. “I can’t tell you how much that meant to me because I created the Imagination Library as a tribute to my Daddy. He was the smartest man I have ever known but I know in my heart his inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams.
“Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission. In the beginning, my hope was simply to inspire the children in my home county but here we are today with a worldwide program that gives a book a month to well over 3 million children.”
Read Taylor Swift’s Full Tribute
“A world without Dolly doesn’t feel possible, real, or right,” it reads. “But because of the eternally generous way she spent her time on this earth and the countless lives she changed for the better, her legacy will be an everlasting one.
“She was truly the gift that kept on giving. Dolly gave us someone to look up to while encouraging us to be who we are as individuals. Somehow she was able to give us her lessons about the world gently and honestly, simultaneously, and oftentimes hilariously. She managed to give the world the ultimate mystery and fantasy in some corners of her life, but to give full transparency in the ways that counted. Somehow she was true grace and true grit, all in one dazzling person. She possessed the softest heart when it came to the struggles of others, and a backbone of steel to defend her own self worth as an artist.
“Along with her other fans, I am so grateful for all of it. For the melodies and lyrics she wrote that thawed even the coldest hearts. For the millions of books she provided children all over the world so that they might fall in love with stories the way she did. For the tightropes she walked so that young girls like me could grow up dreaming of joining the circus too.
“Dolly, I’ll think of you each step of the way.”
~ Taylor Swift
